Archive for the ‘tip’ Category

I was starting to get a collection of skirts for my 31 skirt purse. I wanted a way to store them, so that I could see all that I had. The answer was hanging in my closet! I used a hanger to hang all my skirts, Now I can see what I have and it takes up very little space in my closet.

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I love thinking up something creative for teacher gifts. This year I made mugs and tote bags for the teachers on vistaprint. I was going to fill the mugs with a mug cake. I wanted to test the recipe ahead of time to make sure it would taste good. I was happily baking in the kitchen, when my elbow hit the coco powder. I watched the powder fly up in the air, as if it were in slow motion. The next thing I knew was I had an eye full of coco powder! It felt like I had gravel in my eye. My hubby rushed in to help me. We had a good laugh over the situation. I took the mishap as a sign that I was not meant to make mug cakes. I filled the mugs with jelly beans instead.

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All weekend I have been getting ready to attend a Create Memories Celebrate crop. I think this will be my 6th year I have attended. I spent the whole weekend doing a modified version of a Power Layout that I learned from a Creative Memories consultant when I started to scrapbook. By laying out your pages ahead of time, you need to take less stuff. If you scrapbook, you know you can never talk all your stash with you. Here is how I prepare for a crop.

First print out the pictures you will use. I think this is the most time consuming part of scrapbooking. My husband takes beautiful picture and it is so hard to narrow them down. After you get your photos they are all jumbled up. Note to photo printing companies: put the pictures in the order we send them. I hate having to go through the pictures and put them in order. Then I group the pictures and put them in piles on my floor. I use a sticky note to mark the date and to group pictures together.

Then I put the picture in an accordion file, to keep then organized and portable.

Next I lay out a bunch of cardboard squares. You usually get these from paper pads or page protector packs. If you look around your stash you will find them. I put down the groups of pictures that will go on each page.

Then I choose a layout. I am a big fan of Becky Fleck’s page maps. You can copy the entire layout or just use parts of it. I print out the maps and put them on index cards. Then I can just put them with my layout, so I remember what I was going to do.

One page at a time, I select and cut paper, ribbon and embellishments. While I am doing this step I use sticky notes to jot down titles and anything else I want to remember to add. On a notepad I make lists of items I need “to buy” and titles or things “to make “ on the wishblade. This makes it easy to do all my computer work at one time.

Finally I use my wishblade to create titles and embellishments.

At the crop all I need to do is adhere everything to the page. This leaves more time to talk to my friends and enjoy myself. No more stressing that I left the perfect thing at home.

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I have been talking with people the past couple of days about how I get my kids to do chores. I posted before about how I use My job chart. The other thing I did was make a checklist for what you need to do when you clean each room. Saying “Clean the bathroom.” can be a little overwhelming and I also don’t want to keep telling them one task at a time. That was too much work for me. So I printed out lists on brightly colored paper and put them around the house.

As you can see, I like to put my lists on the inside of cabinet doors. This makes them easy to see when you reach in to get the cleaner.

I hope this comes across as a clever idea and not that I am a control freak. Because I am far from a control freak.